Wireless Web Digest: FCC Imposes e911 Fine On T-Mobile

T-Mobile USA Inc. last week agreed to pay a fine of $1.1 million for failing to deploy wireless enhanced 911 services on its GSM network in a manner consistent with a waiver it received in 2000. Other headlines include:

NTT DoCoMo plans
to adopt a communications method in 2005 to raise the data transmission
speed of its FOMA 3G mobile phone service by more than five times,
President Keiji Tachikawa said Thursday. At the moment, FOMA service
offers a maximum communications speed of 384 kbps. A method called
high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) will offer an average speed of 2
Mbps and a maximum rate of 14 Mbps, Tachikawa said. The HSDPA method is an
upgraded version of the W-CDMA 3G standard format.

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FOMA to
go even faster by 2005Intel Funds Chinese, Korean Firms in Wi-Fi Push
On paper at least, IPone and Ocamar Technologies may look like the
hundreds of other Asian tech start-ups looking for a breakthrough. Each
employs less than 100 people, the former in Seoul and the latter in
Shanghai, and neither has eye-popping revenues. But the pair are at the
cutting edge of what chip giant Intel Corp. and others in the computer
industry, hope will be a high-tech revolution that sees more and more
people surfing the Web using laptop computers with wireless connections.
This week the two became the first East Asian Wi-Fi firms to receive money
from Intel, which has now funded about a dozen such companies worldwide,
said Claude Leglise, vice president of Intel Capital, in an interview at
the companys Hong Kong office. Leglise would not disclose the size of
Intels first East Asian Wi-Fi investments, but said amounts typically
ranged between $1 million and $10 million. Read the full story on:
Yahoo! NewsFCC Imposes e911 Fine On T-Mobile
T-Mobile USA Inc. last week agreed to pay a fine of $1.1 million for
failing to deploy wireless enhanced 911 services on its GSM network in a
manner consistent with a waiver it received in 2000. The consent decree
wraps up the outstanding issues regarding the use of enhanced observed
time difference (EOTD) technology for E911. EOTD is a hybrid
network/handset-based technology for GSM systems that never met the
location benchmarks in the Federal Communications Commissions rules. In
addition to agreeing to the fine, T-Mobile agreed to a schedule that
allows it nearly two years to deploy network-based technology to those
public-safety answering points that have requested the service. If it
misses these deadlines it could face millions of dollars in additional
fines.
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RCR Wireless
NewsJapan Firms to Test Radio-Tagged Luggage
Singapores Changi, Amsterdams Schiphol and New Yorks John F. Kennedy
International airports will later this year take part in an experiment
testing radio-tagged luggage. The test is part of a plan by a newly formed
consortium of Japanese firms to promote RFID (radio frequency
identification) tags on passenger luggage, according to a report on Nikkei
Electronics News. This "hands-free" delivery of luggage will be tested
this year by the new Advanced Airport Systems Technology Research
Consortium. It comprises 58 Japanese transport-related and electronics
firms such as the Narita Airport Authority, Japan Airlines (JAL), All
Nippon Airways (ANA), Omron, Dai Nippon Printing, Fujitsu and Matsushita
Electric. Read the full story on:
CNET News.comKensington WiFi Finder Helps Locate Hotspots
Computer peripheral maker Kensington has introduced an alternative for
users looking for Wi-Fi connections when theyre on the road: The
WiFi Finder, a
handheld wireless network detector that works completely independently of
your computer. The pocket-sized device measures about 2.95 x 0.39 x 2.17
inches, and sports a button that you depress to activate. A three light
display indicates signal strength.Read the full story on:
MacCentral